Thoughts on Money

“conventional budgeting methods rely on restriction, discipline, and perfectionism in a way that doesn’t work for people. They ignore an important truth about money: it’s meant to be spent.”

A lot of financial mistakes come from trying to copy people who are different from you.

But consumption smoothing pays homage to an existential reality: Life itself is the ultimate scarce asset. The future is unknowable, and religiously maintaining a double-digit savings rate through the worst squalls of life is not of the utmost importance.

I work with the wealthy, the children of the wealthy and the soon to be wealthy. Please listen to what I have to say. I know you think that if you can just make enough money, your problems will go away. And there will be harmony in your household. And your relationships will be better.Unfortunately, that that’s not how it works. What actually... See more

That was our first lesson. To earn money, we did some house chores that we called “job-jobs”.

You could only do the paying “job-jobs” after your regular household chores.

She continued to build on this by talking to us about our futures and encouraging us to save to meet different goals instead of spending it all.

But here’s the key: Money work isn’t about getting rid of our uncomfortable emotions. It’s about learning to respond to them, to work with them, and to learn from them.

And most importantly, to not let them steer you in directions that will make life harder for you.

Here is one that I’ve encountered time and again: marketing is the mother of revenue. Some of you might wince at the idea of self-promotion and all of your biases with the word marketing. When it comes to gigantic corporations, I do too. But let’s consider this in a small business context, where you work in and with your community. In this sense,... See more

Neither he nor the others feel that the hunched shoulders and housing insecurity of their youth were good for their art. The “La Bohème” portrait of impoverished painters and poets was after all a description, not a prescription. “And at least they could afford the garret,” Jacobs-Jenkins says. “In New York, forget it.”

Being "good with money" means you know how to USE it. Saving money is one use, but it's not the exclusive way to put your money to work for you .